TERRAFORMING TERRA
We discuss and comment on the role agriculture will play in the containment of the CO2 problem and address protocols for terraforming the planet Earth.
A model farm template is imagined as the central methodology. A broad range of timely science news and other topics of interest are commented on.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Stanford Scientists Find Way to Predict Sunspots

This is obviously good news.Having a two day lead time and perhaps even a
measure of intensity is going to allow detailed predictions and plausible
defensive protocols that do not demand crash stop capability.One really likes to be able to shut things
down slowly when the big one erupts and two days is a darn good start.

It is hard to believe we will get
that much better than this but one never says never.

It will still take a few years to
both fully model and understand the apparent system and further time to fully
exploit this knowledge, but we are well on the way to having an excellent space
weather system in place.

Stanford scientists find way to predict sunspots

David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

Friday, August 19, 2011

This image provided by NASA shows a solar flare just as sunspot 1105
was turning away from Earth on Sept. 8, 2010 the active region erupted, producing
a solar flare and a fantastic prominence. The eruption also hurled a bright
coronal mass ejection into space. The eruption was not directed toward any
planets.

Stanford physicists probing the sun's deep interior have predicted the
emergence of sunspots on the surface a full two days before they appear,
providing the first early warning of the violent solar storms that can endanger
astronauts in space, disrupt electric power grids on Earth, and plunge cities
into darkness.

Erupting sunspot regions release immensely powerful blasts of X-rays
and clouds of ionized gases in two forms that speed toward Earth at millions of
miles per hour.

Solar flares, moving at the speed of light, can intensify
high-frequency radio communications and generate the shimmering northern lights
- the aurora borealis.

But far worse storms called coronal mass ejections can send X-rays and
immense ionized gas clouds called plasma into the Earth's atmosphere. At their
peak, these invisible electromagnetic clouds form part of the solar wind and
can wipe out power lines, warp Global Positioning Systems, distort satellite
instrument readings and delay satellite launches.

One such event in 1989 disrupted a Canadian power grid so badly that
circuit breakers tripped all over Quebec,
and much of the province was blacked out for nine hours.

Until now, space weather forecasters have been able to warn power
companies, airlines, NASA and others to prepare only when the sunspots and the
ensuing solar storms occurred.

A longtime desire

Solar physicist David Hathaway at NASA's MarshallSpaceCenter
in Huntsville, Ala., called the Stanford group's
predictions "an important result."

"It's long been our hope to
see the storms of sunspots before they show up," Hathaway said.

The experiments that led to
today's report in the Journal Science were conducted by Stathis Ilonidis, a
graduate student in physics at Stanford, and his colleagues. Analyzing
signals from a satellite peering at the sun, they detected the acoustic signs
of four electromagnetic storms that were being generated as turbulence 40,000
miles deep in what Ilonidis calls "the roaring ocean" of the sun's
interior.

His calculations showed that the sunspots raced upward from storm
centers in the sun's deep interior at speeds of more than 1,300 mph, Ilonidis
reported. Within one to two days those bursts, churning the sun's interior like
earthquakes, emerged as wide sunspot regions on the surface, he said. It was,
in effect, an achievement in what solar physicists call helioseismology.

In each case, the physicists said they measured the time it took for
the storms to emerge as sunspots. The method, they said, could provide time for
forecasters to issue early warnings that episodes of bad space weather were
coming, but it first will have to be refined and proved.

Using satellite data

The scientists gathered their observations primarily from a satellite
named SOHO- the Solar and Heliospheric
Observatory - that has been flying for 15 years as a joint project of NASA and
the European Space Agency. The satellite orbits around a point in space a
million miles out between Earth and the sun, where the gravity of each body
cancels out the other and keeps the craft on a stable path. Another NASA
satellite, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, also provided data for one sunspot
detection.

Ilonidis, who has been working on the project alongside solar
physicists Junwei Zhao and Alexander Kosovichev for 10 years, predicted
sunspots and the "minor to strong" solar storms that followed events
retrospectively in 1996 and 1998, and in real time to one in 2003 and most
recently last Feb. 12, they said.

Government solar scientists not involved in the Stanford work were
quick to praise it.

Joseph Kunches, at the Space Weather Prediction Center of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo., called the report
"very promising," and said if it proves that sunspots can be
predicted regularly, the Stanford team's work will be a major advance.

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About Me

18 years old, having cleaned out my HS library, I concluded the only ambition worth having was becoming a great genius. An inner voice cheered. Yet it is my path I have shared much to the Human Gesalt. Mar 2017 - 4.56 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM. Sep 2010 -My essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in Relativity. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data, record impressions, interpretations and to introduce new insights to readers.